In 2007, Facebook made $153M. Zuckerberg announced Facebook Ads on November 6, 2007. Then they basically doubled their revenue the next year, and for several years after. They must have had something before Facebook Ads, because they couldn't have made the entire $153M in less than two months.

> Bitcoin core derives a good deal of value from being the entry to exchanging for coins/tokens to buy into an ICO, which is now more restrained due to last week's SEC actions. While there are stinky ICO-funded projects, there are also valid projects that are growing. I have always seen it as more of a front door, given that it's the primary pair across exchanges and given tx costs. LTC was, for long, promo'd as the coin that would be used for day-to-day purchases. Unfortunately traditional fiat users do not think in that way as this is not the usual use of something fiat.

I understood most of those words individually, but the combination was a complete bafflement.

And that, in a nutshell, is a big problem for Bitcoin. I understand cash - it has value because the government says it has value and it's directly exchangeable for something that I can relate to that value (say, a huge bag of bubblegum). But how do you explain an ICO and it's value to someone, without an actual, physical object being present?

On the surface, it sounds like something virtual being exchanged for something else virtual which may or may not lead to some other virtual thing, but at no time is anything physical, representing concrete value, present.

In re the bubblegum example - when I was young, my grandfather handed my cousin and I a dollar to buy some gum, expecting we buy a piece or two and hand him the change. You can figure out the rest, I think. He was kinda pissed off.

So in simple terms, it's basically a highly convertible currency, but now all the things you can convert it into are useless, which means it's not as valuable as before. Did I get that right?